Calculating one’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is an important step to creating an exercise routine and diet to create an individualized healthy lifestyle plan and lose weight.

BMR is basically the amount of calories the body burns while it is in the state of rest. To put it in simpler terms, BMR is how many calories the body burns while you are sleeping or if you just decided to lay in bed all day.

It is important to calculate your BMR because typically your BMR decreases as you age, making it more difficult to stay in good shape and live a healthy lifestyle.

Therefore, you must find out what your BMR is in order to find out how many hours of cardiovascular activities and other exercises you need to add to your daily routine. Adding these sorts of activities will increase your body’s ability to burn calories more quickly since the leaner your body, the more efficiently and rapidly it burns calories while at rest.

In order to calculate an individual’s BMR, a simple formula can be used. There are separate formulas for men and women.

For a man, 66 is added to 6.23 times the person’s weight in pounds. The person’s height in inches times 12.7 is also added to the previous two numbers. Finally, 6.76 multiply the person’s age in years and then the sum of the previous three numbers is subtracted from the product of the person’s age. This formula looks like this:

Calculating a woman’s BMR is done using a similar formula, but some of the numbers in the formula are different to account for differences in the male and female bodies. First, 655 is added to the product of 4.35 and the woman’s weight. These two numbers are also added to the product of 4.7 and the woman’s height in inches. Finally, the sum of these three numbers is subtracted from the product of 4.7 and the woman’s age in years. The formula will look like this: